Research Bio
Rebecca M. McLennan’s research integrates North American legal, environmental, political, and economic histories within a transnational and multidisciplinary framework. Her acclaimed first book, The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941 (Cambridge, 2008), examined the intersections of law, labor, capital, and social movements in the making of America's prison-based penal system, and was awarded the John Phillip Reid Book Prize (American Society for Legal History), the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Early Scholar Book Prize, and the AHA’s Littleton Griswold Award. Her second book, Becoming America: A History for the 21st Century (McGraw Hill, 2015), coauthored with Berkeley cultural historian David Henkin and updated in 2022, offered an innovative synthesis of North American history from pre-colonial Indigenous worlds to the globalized present. McLennan's current research project, “The Wild Life Of Law,” investigates the interplay among international law, resource extraction, and ecological crisis in the context of the late-19th century’s escalating, planet-wide competition for resources and territory. McLennan’s work has appeared in a range of peer-reviewed venues, including The Journal of Urban History, Diplomatic History, and several academic anthologies. She has also served as a consultant and/or featured expert in various documentaries, including Lynn Novick’s upcoming PBS series Crime and Punishment in America (2026) and Vincent Brown’s Slavery in Effect: What is the Lifetime of Mass Incarceration? (2016). A member of the History Department faculty since 2004, McLennan also holds affiliations with Berkeley Law's Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP) program and the Berkeley Food Institute. She teaches at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and supervises doctoral students working in legal, environmental, labor, and/or criminal justice history.
Research Expertise and Interest
North America: 1763-present, law & society, environment, global, capitalism, crime & punishment, (4316), global foodways